Personal journal dealing mainly with music listened to, plus various food and wine matters. Rants at a few favourite topics.

Thursday, 9 February 2017

Lisa Oshima in Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev
and I only have a nodding acquaintance. I know little or nothing of
his string quartets (did he write any?), or his piano sonatas, or his
piano concertos, or his operas, or his ballet music, or his
symphonies. I do, however, know well and like very much his
music for violin: the two violin concertos, the two sonatas, the
various pieces arranged for violin. So I bought a CD with the
(unknown, to me) violinist Lisa Oshima with the (unknown to
me) pianist Stefan Stroissig. The CD contains the wonderful first
sonata for violin and piano, the Five Melodies Op 35 bis, Five Pieces
from Cinderella, and an arranged Suite from Romeo and Juliet. A good
start: an imaginative combination of pieces for a seventy minute CD.

The seventy minutes go
by highly pleasurably. Ms Oshima is a fine violinist, the duo works
well and is well recorded and balanced so we can hear both piano and
violin whenever they play together. If I only give the CD two stars
rather than three, it's because Prokofiev's music occasionally calls
for some real muscle, particularly in the first sonata, and Ms Oshima
is too much a well brought up Japanese young lady to risk making a
harsh sound, and the pianist, Mr Stroissig, never veers towards
percussion. Tempi on the leisurely side do not help. So we get a melodious Prokofiev, which drops it one star
from my appraisal. I have twenty recordings of the first sonata,
including excellent ones from Janine Jansen, David Oistrakh, Alina Ibragimova, Lisa
Batiashvili, Vadim Repin and Josef Spacek. It's a frequently recorded work
and competition is fierce, but Ms Oshima can certainly join this exalted company, particularly for those who don't like their Prokofiev too "raw". A warm welcome to seventy minutes of
Prokofiev with Lisa Oshima, and some wonderful violin playing; a CD I shall certainly listen to many times.